I just replaced my Nighthawk R7000 with the Flint AX1800 model. The transition went well, way better than expected! I do have a couple Q’s:
I see no way to back up settings with the factory GLi.Net interface. I can, and have, done this with the LUCi interface, but what exactly do I have? Is it a legit backup of settings?
Neither of our phones (LG model G6) will connect in repeater mode except in 2.4g mode. Both phone(s) and Flint show 5g as an option but it just doesn’t work. Possibly due to T-Mobile’s OS being stuck at Android v8.0. Is this supported?
Thanks!
Russ
Edit: BTW, why do some of my clients show up as “This is a randomized MAC address”? What does this mean? They are obviously not random at all.
Yes, that’s it. Whenever my Spectrum cable is off-line, I can use my phone’s WiFi hotspot to feed internet into the Flint router and have it distributed to all clients without any other steps. It does connect as expected, but only on the 2.4g band even though both devices have the 5g band option available and are configured to use 5g. I haven’t run a speed check, so it may not matter.
On the MAC address thing, none of these “random” MACs are phones. For example, one is my Generac 24kw control panel, one is a B-Hyve watering system hub (while the other hub is fine), one is a Netgear WiFi extender. These MACs do not change, so I find it odd that they are pegged as doing so? I’m not sure it affects anything, but I have all my clients set as static IPs tied to the device MAC. I can watch my client list on the web interface and see various devices dropping off the connected list, then coming back on. Not sure what that indicates…
Do these clients utilize some sort of low-powered radios that cycle off/on during transmission… like some sort of power saving feature? Can you set one of their radios to max. power & see if it holds the link?
ps/ LuCI backup are, by default, just the configuration files found in /etc/config; it doesn’t back up binarys. 7-Zip will let you open tarballs (tar.gz) if you wanted to take a look. They’re just text files in UTF-8.
With my old Netgear Router, the only time clients would drop off the list was if something happened to them, like a battery going out. They would stay off the connected list until the device was either repaired or reset. I was wondering if there’s a “lease time” that can be adjusted but I didn’t see it in the GLi web interface.
On the backups, would these config files “restore” a Flint to a workable, running router after doing a hard reset?
I was wondering if there’s a “lease time” that can be adjusted but I didn’t see it in the GLi web interface.
You can assign static leases through GL’s GUI → Clients but there’s more options found in LuCI → Network → DHCP and DNS → Static Leases → $client → Edit. The corresponding conf is /etc/config/dhcp .
No; you’d have to re-install whatever ‘plugins’ (in GL parlance)/.ipkgs you’ve pulled through opkg install since the last flashing. Then upload the tarball to overwrite the default confs as a restore operation.
Randomized MAC Addresses are generally pegged as being randomized because the second character in the MAC Address is either 2, 6, A, or E. If those devices you mentioned have those characters as the second character then it will be listed as a randomized address despite never changing.
The good news is that listing them as randomized doesn’t “do” anything to them, it just reminds you that they might change and that any rules applied to them will only hold for as long as they keep that same randomized address.